robbiefrom13

shudder! (you just reminded me of Schwabby) fair dinkum, he's thinking about changing his place of work. His contract is up for renewal, and he wonders about maybe moving on. So he's disappointed at how he's gone and how the company is going, and he thinks about his options. You want him to put his blazer on and kiss the statue, and beg our forgiveness for admitting to thinking what any intelligent employee would weigh up today? But of course, the club has well and truly demonstrated loyalty in its treatment of its longterm servants, hasn't it? How could the players not have soaked this up?

Nice work, boys. Classy. You won't ever come here again, then, will you?

Liam Jurrah. Yes yes yes, Jurrah did dumb stuff - but not until after his club had been well and truly stuffing him up. You can't justify connecting those dots, fair enough; but in answer to Akum's question, Liam Jurrah. The Liam Jurrah that our club stuffed up was a man who had won all sorts of honours, and there was absolutely no criticism could be levelled against him as a person at that time. So - sure, MFC stuffed up Watts. It was far from the first time we'd done anything so stupid. The arrogant and self-important try-hards that stuffed up the club when they shafted Norm Smith have genuflected round the corridors of the Northern Stand for decades. Chat rooms too. We're more important than the players - that's their calling card. They trash players, it's what they do, to demonstrate their real grasp of a footy club. watts was sacrificed to somebody's loony idea of marketing. Jurrah was sacrificed to some loony's idea of anti-flair as a style of play. Magner starred in the middle so we put him on the forward line - ok, he's not in that class of talent, but he was playing pretty good Nathan Jones style footy. Trengove used to be considered pretty handy...

We are generally pretty happy about Jackson speaking unvarnished truth. I reckon we are currently seeing the light of plain-speaking dissolving the Old Boys Cancer that has hung over the club almost to its death. Does anyone else think Jack Watts just says it as he thinks it? Wonderful courage in that. Jack answers questions according to what he has to say, not toeing any line. None of the Schwab blazers and whiteboard encyclicals or media coached "credit to the boys" nonsense from Jack. Never a trace of arrogance in the way he talks about himself, either. I think he is modest, and yet I have more than once seen him late in a game take responsibility to try and save the game. I really can't understand the mentality of anyone who would for a moment consider swapping Watts for Carlton's pet Cro-Magnon man Robinson. In six or seven years, everyone will recognise Watts' personality same as they will recognise his particular skill set. Well, obviously, he will have grown into them, too. But we just don't quite have it clear yet. Like Roos, Watts is not out of the full-on Butch mould; but nevertheless, as others have before, he may yet prove to be of the highest value. There is more than one type of great player, and the nearer you get to being a champion, the likelier you are to be unique. I think Watts might be anything in time, and in the context of the club he's been at, his inability to do his thing at the highest level is no great surprise or condemnation of him. Out of every impression I have ever had of him, one of the most striking has been the inability of the team to mesh with him. Not all his fault. Certainly not helped either by messages put out by his coaches. Everyone has to learn how to work this - but he's not a stock workman with a by-the-numbers skill-set. Context has to be factored in too, and the context Watts has been in at Melbourne has been incredibly bad in just about every way. Yet for all that, he does seem to remain very personable and patient and resilient, and he does speak fearlessly (not arrogantly). The Greeks had a word for this way of speaking (parrhesia), and they held it in very high esteem; said it went to the heart of character. Thank goodness for Nathan Jones and his contributions these last few dreadful years; but I don't think anyone supposes Jones will ever have the star quality that a lot of people - from all over the league - say they can see lurking in Jack Watts.

bring back Neeld, you mean? That worked well...

so many unpressured possessions to Brisbane... And speed out of stoppages, that's what we just don't have.

Jones is v-e-r-y slow moving the ball on.

don't we though!

that's why you'd say "best coach ever"

you're a nice guy when you keep your teeth in

Camus had Sisyphus as the happiest of all mortals, on the grounds that there wasn't anything worse could ever happen to him - and every time he stretched at the top of the hill, before starting back down again, he knew he had all over again achieved a kind of victory. Survival - what can Collingwood and Essendon and Sydney supporters know about that, compared to us?

Roos won't be "interested" until the Board and CEO are sorted, perhaps? He keeps saying things that are consistent with that logical position. He may really be waiting until after those things before he actually decides. It would make good sense to do it in that order. In which case, there would be no answer yet. Rightly.

I must be very thick - I can't think of anything but the players. I am a real sucker for an underdog. I'd love to see Jack Watts stick it up all the knockers, and I am quite sure he has the talent to do it beautifully. I want to be there that day. Before him, Jurrah. I'll never forgive the mismanagement of Liam Jurrah. So now, there's Jimmy Toumpas, and big Max, and Garland is Tasmanian so I get a big kick out of him, Chippa is a Ballarat boy sort of and so am I, and anyway plenty of underdogs every week. Love em. Lived right through the Robbie Flower years, it's always the players. I remember 64 really well, and for me, the premiership is great, but at the time it's sort of your right, and there's some thrill and so on, but it's never the greatest thing, not for me. I just love seeing the players pull out the really good stuff that wasn't expected exactly, you see them getting into stuff they haven't done before, or can't do every week, and that is the pleasure of going to the footy. i love the beauty of the game, the excellence that the Greeks loved. So long as the thugs don't hospitalise them, and the coaches don't mess with them, I just love seeing the agon and hopefully the exhilaration of PB moments every game. All sport is metaphorical. We all have relatives who get old, and what do you do - chuck em out? i don't think so.

well, maybe - but so's your comment

Not a bad rule of thumb, maybe, to write off anyone who is comfortable with "spraying out" the players? Or would you just apply it to coaches? I'm curious as to your reasoning at the time - did you see an inevitable alienation of those players and consequent fracturing of club unity? Or was it "the vibe" - an infectious defeatedness/negativity being put out from Day one? Or a character defect put on display, with Neeld rejecting any teaching role, and being nothing but a front-runner? Were you thinking about the negative effect on marketing of the club - so that he must eventually fall foul of management? Or what? I'd really like to know what struck you so clearly in that first moment? (Apologies to those sick of all this, but some of us are still trying to understand and learn.)

Neeld is worth discussing because he is the personification of one approach to player management/development. We all, naturally, have an interest in the question of what sort of coaching will bring out the best in our players. It matters for the future. Up till now, I would have described Neeld's approach as the tough disciplinarian approach. I thought he was a fail because the team was chat all over every week. But now I think that may be missing the real point. In the Mike Sheahan interview, I thought Jack Watts implied that how he reacts is not the way others do, and it sounds as though he has not discussed it with his team-mates. This strikes me as odd. I wonder how close the playing group are. Maybe Neeld was actually, essentially, a divider of men. What if this was in practice the real core of Neeldism - dichotomising or polarising everything? Maybe part of Neeld's culture was to polarise people into "for me" and "against me" groups? Think about it - the old guard had leprosy, Moloney was clearly taking his bat and going home, and the young guys not very confidently knew just one thing for sure: that the right answer was to "buy in", whether they felt like it or not. Delete any ideas about Mr Nice-guy relationships, etc. And no lack of people to tell them they were in the wrong, if they weren't really comfortable with it all. Some got their heads around it, others struggled, but what if nobody really discussed it? - so that someone as intelligent as Jack Watts afterwards is not really able to say much about the range of responses to Neeld. (Jack could have been being diplomatic, circumspect, etc - I know. But if he was just telling it how it is, then it seemed odd to me that he was not able to say in any specifics what the range of reactions were.) Polarisation is always destructive, I think. Inclusivity is always a good thing. "Team" must always be in the space between the members, filling the whole space from each to each other. Team members know each other. I am delighted to see progress under Craig, and I believe it is largely due to Craig's more personable and wise handling of the players. I'd love to see growing empathy and bonding between the players; but Jack Watts' interview made me wonder whether in his time the benefits of understanding stuff about one another - and sharing stuff, learning from each other - have been fostered at Melbourne. Closeness and knowing each other really well was reputed to be one of the features of Norm Smith's great sides.

Interesting though, to see how good Watts will be by the start of 2014. Will he become the real standout in the team? One important moment was when Watts went back and stopped another doggie goal, late in the game. Wonderful Royce Hart-like mark. It shows, I say, that he will be a big occasion player. I predict we will be seeing him attacking the ball on the forward line with that kind of out-of-my-way decisiveness, soon enough. And yes, I agree Neeld did not appear to value that kind of skill. Neeld's epitaph: in his wisdom, he tried to trade Watts and he tried to insist Jurrah become a defender. But Craig is doing very nicely, and the players can use their skills at last. It looks to me like the players have at last been told to look for Jack when he's playing at full forward. And isn't he leading well? Knocking out to the crumbers when he can't mark it himself, too - especially in the first quarter. All class. The last quarter fade-out didn't upset me so much. Gawn was out-muscled and faded - their big guys got on top, and we were short of a gorilla-minder. Their big-bodied and experienced mids knew what to do with our tiring guys. But we still held on - Watts and Frawley in the end, against the tide, stood up just enough. The gain for us was enormous - the fact that we didn't do everything right is no surprise - but we did win! Bigger bodies in the middle will be there in time, and it may not take much more than a few weeks for the fumbling to diminish. So it was three great quarters and a win - great individual stuff from Watts, Rodan, Terlich, Howe, more of Jimmy Toumpas, better spreading and taking it on - I thought there was a big step forward, and plenty to take away with us. And the feeling when we'd won was pretty bloody good - everyone singing, the boys out in the middle, the footies for the kids, huge amount of positive feeling.

Yes - never under-estimate how debilitating imposed guilt can be!

Neeld had had his turn - his dignity was not the issue.

Please may we get a coach who shares this belief.

such omniscience! fantasising. Please, Paul, don't be reading Demonland...

yes except angry pills... let's have controversy-free clean air for our rise, please!

so Neeld won't be shown up?

it took McLean a couple of years to get things out of his system, or whatever - he's going well now. Maybe it's too early to call on these other guys.

Dionysus would have rejoiced in Jurrah, told Wonna to let loose with more, would have told em all to go for it, and ditch the statistics and KPI's and all that rational rational drivel. Dionysus would save us, upend the naysayers and rebuilders and corporate beckscratchers, tip over the whole reasoned approach - and a very vengeful character if you insist on sober and serious denial of all that he stands for. Barassi's handball Grand Final was close to the Dionysus brand of mayhem. So was Liam Jurrah on the field, every time.